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Almost half of all Americans can’t find $400 for an unexpected expense, according to the Federal Reserve [1]. Thirty percent--73 million people--either find it difficult to get by or are just getting by financially. Millions of Americans’ lives could be transformed by a basic income, but what would people actually do with some extra cash?

We are researchers, not advocates. While we plan to answer this question systematically by launching the U.S.’s first-ever, large-scale study of basic income, we want to hear from people in their own words about how they think their lives might change. In designing the study we have tried to think through all of the ways the money could affect recipients, but there are inevitably pathways of impact that we have not thought about.

So we're reaching out to people from all walks of life to help us identify things we might be missing. We hit the streets in our neighborhood to ask this question, and were amazed by the diversity of answers.

Take a look:

Now we want to hear from you. What would you do with an extra $1000 guaranteed to you for every month, for the rest of your life, and why?

To participate, shoot a 30-60 second video telling us what you would do with an extra $1000 cash per month, use the hashtag #mybasicincome, and submit it here via our google form. To encourage submissions, three entrants will be randomly selected to win $1000 cash to spend with no strings attached, and we’ll post our favorites online.

Submissions are due January 15, 2018 and we will announce the winners two weeks later.

Thank you in advance for helping us design the study; we look forward to sharing our findings.